


Pictures of the Past

by Magnetism_bind



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Complex relationships, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Intimacy, Sex, background suicide mention, memories of London days, moments from their life in nassau, obvious mentions of Thomas Hamilton, quiet moments, slow transformation into Flint, the past is never really past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25899571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnetism_bind/pseuds/Magnetism_bind
Summary: Their first year in Nassau the past is slow to die.
Relationships: Miranda Barlow/Captain Flint | James McGraw
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	Pictures of the Past

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this fantastic set of art of @liviliadoodles ~ https://livila.tumblr.com/post/624722390111404032/the-miranda-and-james-complex-relationship

_One_

He stumbles up the path to the cottage, trying not to breathe too hard, hand pressed flat against his hip. The pain isn’t that bad yet. He knows there are worse wounds, this will barely leave a scar, but now the adrenaline is wearing off, the pain is getting to him. It seems like an eternity before he can reach the steps.

Miranda has the door open before he’s there. “James?”

“It’s all right.” He says, though the wince of pain belays the statement. “I’m all right.”

She looks down and catches sight of the blood seeping across his hip. _“James!”_

“I’m all right.” He hisses again, stumbling up the steps. His name sounds wrong on her lips. Everything feels wrong these days. The cottage isn’t home, nowhere is home. They have no place to call their own. This is a temporary situation. It won’t be forever. He’s not staying on this godforsaken island forever. He made that vow the first time his boots hit the sand that day they arrived.

So different from the previous times he had been here when he had started to see Thomas’s vision for himself.

Miranda guides him to a chair. He sinks into it while she fetches a basin of water and a cloth. She sets it on the table beside him, her hands working busily. “Get your coat off.”

Wincing he sheds the coat, letting it fall to the floor. His shoulders ache, his entire body aches for that matter. He rests his head in his hand for a moment.

Miranda reaches for his shirt, and he raises his arms obediently, stifling a cry of pain as she pulls it free from his shoulders.

In the lamplight the wound looks worse, raw and bloody. He sets his teeth as Miranda cleans it.

“How did this happen?”

“I was in the vanguard.” He says shortly. He’s still new to his crew, still proving himself. It’s strangely easy to throw himself into the fray of violence. He doesn’t let himself think about that, only knows that the stillness at the center of a battle is a rare kind of peace. Of course there are always risks. He can’t help that. He didn’t see the man with the sword coming at him until he turned, only able to dodge at the last moment.

Miranda dresses the wound in silence. He can feel her judgement at his carelessness though he chooses not to acknowledge it. Neither of them want to address where they are these days. This is all they have now.

“There.” Miranda finishes bandaging the wound and steps back. With a sigh she brushes her hair back from her forehead.

He reaches for her hand and pulls her close, pressing his face into her dress. “I’m sorry for worrying you.” It’s just words, it certainly doesn’t mean he won’t do it again (they both know it will happen again) but it’s all he has to offer her here.

Miranda cups his jaw with her palm and looks at him. There’s a smile on her lips, but it’s all too brief for his liking. “Be careful, James.” She whispers. “Please be careful.” She doesn’t tell him to do so because he’s all she has. Because if she loses him, she’ll be alone in the world. He knows that. He doesn’t need her to say it, or maybe he does. Maybe if she actually said it, he would stay. Perhaps he would take care. But Miranda doesn’t utter the words and he knows that next time he’ll be at the front of the vanguard again, sword at the ready.

Later they’ll go to bed, and move slowly against each other. Miranda taking care because of his wound. Him burying his moan of release in her hair. The soft pressure of her breasts against his chest as they lie there together.

It will still take him a long time to fall asleep afterwards, but feeling her rest against him, and the sound of her breathing, it will almost be enough.

* * *

_Two_

He can’t stop seeing the ship surrender to a man as he lies there in the candlelight. He’d simply told Miranda that they had been successful in their venture. He had brought her a bottle of wine from the ship’s store. And for the first time he saw what he was becoming through her eyes.

This was true pirate spoils sitting here on the table between them. For a moment he wondered if she would reject it, and with it, the man he was now. It would be within her rights to do so. She’d never asked for any of this. Even now, he wondered if one day he would return to the island and find her gone. He wouldn’t blame her if that day ever came.

Still, when she reaches for the bottle, smoothing her fingers over the glass, he feels the tension in him ease.

“This is a rare treat.” She smiles faintly. “Thomas always liked this red.”

It’s a knife point, a reminder, a gentle wound to let himself not get too proud of this victory. There was a reason he was doing this after all. He should remember that.

She fetches the glasses and they’d drunk the wine with dinner that night. And now Miranda is asleep and he can’t stop thinking about the ship that had surrendered to him simply because of his name.

His new name.

He gazes down at Miranda. There are times that he marvels at her accompanying him here. She could have simply cut ties with him after Thomas and gone elsewhere alone, somewhere civilized like Paris or Boston, somewhere far away from London and their memories and collective grief. Far away from him.

He wouldn’t have blamed her if she had done that either.

But she had come here with him instead.

He tilts his head, studying her, remembering the first time he had ever seen her, how carefree and beautiful she had looked. 

“You’re still awake.” Miranda murmurs. She opens her eyes and looks up at him. “What’re you thinking about?”

“The first time that I saw you.”

“Oh?” She shifts a little, resting her chin in her palm as she looks at him, hair falling over her shoulder. “That afternoon on the dock.”

“No.” He says after a moment, and there’s a flicker of surprise in her eyes. “That’s the first day I spoke to you. The first time that I saw you was a few weeks before, shortly after I’d been assigned as Thomas’s liaison.”

“Oh?” Miranda looks up at him. “Where were we and why don’t I remember seeing you?”

He smiles. “Because you didn’t see me. It was a party and I was merely delivering a message for the Admiral.” He pauses, remembering standing there on the edge of a ballroom as a footman found the gentleman he was supposed to speak with.

The room full of dancers had held no interest for him. He had no designs in politics or titles. All he wanted was to make captain and have a ship of his own to command. But as he waited, he heard someone mention Lady Hamilton, a whisper and a meaningful look, and he had followed the gaze to the brunette woman dancing among the crowd.

She was lovely in a way that would have arrested his attention even if he hadn’t known who she was. But knowing that she was the wife of the lord he had met earlier in the week, there was a pang of some undefinable emotion within his chest. They made a handsome couple no doubt. He could picture them quite easily together.

The man dancing with her had leaned in close to whisper something in her ear and she tossed her head back and laughed, the sound sweet and fleeting above the music.

He turned his attention back to the business at hand, pretending he hadn’t been staring at Lady Hamilton.

“Ah, “ Miranda nods as he relays the memory. “That would have been at the Thornbys, I believe. Thomas wasn’t there that night or I’m sure we would have spoken.”

“I’m sure of it.” He murmurs.

Miranda smiles. “Was that the first time you heard any rumors about me?” She moves her hand to brush along his forearm, just a light affectionate touch.

He shakes his head. “No, that was later.”

“But you had heard them before the day I came to your room.” Her fingertips are feather soft upon his skin.

“Yes.” He admits. “I had heard them.” It had been easy to dismiss them at the time, but when she had appeared at his door that day, clearly comfortable entering his room with him only in his shirt and leggings…

He shifts on his side, watching her as she gazes at him.

Wordlessly, Miranda parts her legs. He reaches for her nightgown, drawing it up to her thighs. He shifts to move over her, positioning himself. The first thrust inside makes him draw a sharp breath as she exhales slowly.

Miranda’s hands settle on his shoulders. She draws him close to kiss and then her hands move over his bare back, down to his backside, pulling him even deeper inside her. It’s the kind of desire she had early in the start of their affair, a natural hunger for him and his body that he had been entranced by. The wonder of being loved and desired by the two of them, separately and together, had been something of a miracle to him. He would never forget it, for the rest of his days, no matter how bleak they were now.

Miranda shudders helplessly as she comes, legs wrapped tightly around his hips. He can feel the tension and surrender in her body as she does, hears the soft exhalation of breath that follows her release.

He buries his face in her shoulder as he finishes, thinking only of the press of her body against his and the warmth of her skin and how she tastes like the past and the future all rolled into one with the stolen wine on her lips.

As he slips out of her and turns to lie on his back it strikes him. It’s the first time since they’ve been here, the first time that they’ve fucked and he hadn’t thought of Thomas. Not fully, not entirely, not like he had the first time they had lain together in this cottage, conscious of the absence presence between them, the wound too fresh for words.

He turns to look at Miranda and her face is almost severe in the shadows of the fading candlelight. Is she thinking of Thomas? Was she able to sense his moment of forgetting?

Miranda utters a faint sigh and leans in to brush a faint kiss across his lips. She doesn’t speak as she turns back to the pillow and he doesn’t ask her.

It was only a brief moment of stepping into the past without the overwhelming ache of grief and he doesn’t know how to feel about that, doesn’t know what to do if the grief ever leaves him. He won’t forget Thomas; he won’t allow himself to forget Thomas. It’s impossible. He knows this was only a moment, but he still feels guilty for allowing it to happen.

He feels guiltier still for no longer being that lieutenant he once was. He’s left James McGraw behind on the docks of London. There are days now where he doesn’t miss the regulations and restrictions of the navy life that once was his. There has always been a freedom at sea, but now he truly understands the meaning of that word and it intoxicates him.

Tonight he feels like he’s truly become the name he chose for himself. Tonight, he is Flint.

* * *

_Three_

The cry wakes her from her sleep. Miranda knows it immediately. She’s heard his grief before but it was nothing new at this point. Usually he quieted himself after a little while, especially if she touched him.

Still, she waits a few minutes to see if the dream will cease on its own. Dream or nightmare, she’s never sure which it is these days. Which it ever was. Is a memory of someone treasured and lost both at once? Some days she thinks one, and some days another. Still, on her own behalf, she doesn’t wish them to end, whichever they are. They’re the only times she sees Thomas anymore.

James stirs beside her. This time it’s a softer noise that escapes him. A quiet pained noise, slipping through his teeth as though even in the dream he doesn’t want to let it be uttered at all.

She touches his shoulder lightly, hoping it’s not one of the nights he wakes in a start, reaching for the sword at the side of the bed.

He quiets under her touch. This time she’s a soothing presence, and for that she’s thankful and a little relieved. She doesn’t know if she has it in her to talk tonight.

She waits a little longer to make sure he’s settled back into sleep before she rises from the bed and leaves the room.

The cottage is dark but she knows it well enough now to traverse it in the dark. She goes outside onto the porch, looking out at the night.

It’s a warm evening and she leans against the railing, drinking it in. it’s been nearly a year since they came to Nassau and now Miranda’s no longer sure what she even expected from it. Or if she ever truly expected anything at all.

From the moment Thomas was said to be dead all her hopes had died as well. She knows that James had still harbored hope of returning to London and rescuing him from Bedlam. He would rescue Thomas and they would return to Nassau and the three of them would make a life for themselves, far from the reach of Alfred Hamilton and the British navy and the society that had rejected them.

She knows that it was his hope and it shattered when he finally accepted that Thomas had died. With Thomas’s death they were just two people left alive, adrift in a new existence, hollowed out of a former dream. It isn’t too late for them to go somewhere else, to not be shackled to this place. Miranda knows that, but she’s not sure James does.

James.

_Flint._

The new persona whose coat James has donned for his new role as pirate captain. It seemed like a fanciful tale, something Miranda would have heard in a salon back in London and been amused and intrigued over. But now, as part of the tale, and yet at the same time not…she doesn’t know anymore.

There is no room for Lady Hamilton in Captain Flint’s life, and so she has become Miranda Barlow, a widow leading a quiet existence who happens to share her home with a pirate captain. She already knows that even in Nassau their relationship will cause her to be judged just as she was judged back in London. Even the fringes of society don’t like to see a woman making a life for herself and choosing the people she shares it with, the people she chooses to share her bed.

“Miranda?”

She starts, turning to see James standing in the doorway watching her.

“Couldn’t sleep.” She offers.

He nods, coming out to stand on the porch beside her. His hands rest on the railing besides hers.

Miranda looks at them and wonders how many men he’s killed since coming here. It doesn’t seem real, but there are days when there’s still blood in the creases of his fingernails and in his hair when he returns to her and she knows not to ask.

James looks down at their hands and places his over hers without speaking. She smiles faintly.

Why are they here on this island trying to put together a fractured dream? How can he still think there’s something to be built here with no Thomas? And yet somehow she knows…he won’t give up on this dream of Thomas’s so easily. Somehow, even if it’s only as a pirate, he still wants to make a difference here. There’s no surrendering that dream now. It’s all he has.

There’s a quiet voice inside her that whispers, ‘He has you.’ And Miranda doesn’t know how to answer that she knows it’s not enough. They will not be enough for each other, no matter how much she wishes it were different.

“Were you dreaming about him?”

James presses his lips together faintly. He looks off into the shadowy garden, the darkened shapes of fences and trees almost menacing in the nighttime. At last he murmurs, “Yes.”

Miranda sighs softly.

“It was of Bedlam.” James whispers. “And I so nearly reached him before…” He cuts himself off, drawing his hand away from hers to grip the railing again.

“James.”

He turns his head away, not willing to be comforted this time, resolutely staring out at the darkness surrounding them. In the trees somewhere, a night bird cries softly.

Miranda takes a deep breath, not wanting to be the first to go in, back to the stifling dark bedroom, but the peace is gone from the night with his presence here and she doesn’t know how to tell him that.

At last James sighs as well. “Coming?” He asks her softly, his hand brushing her shoulder, a mute apology for not accepting her comfort as he has in the past. Countless nights where she sits with her arms around him, stroking his hair and soothing the lingering fears.

She shakes her head. “In a little while.”

He hesitates and then presses a kiss to her hair before going back inside.

Miranda lets herself sink down on the porch floor then. She leans her back against the railing, drawing another deep breath. She does this until the heaviness in her chest has receded and she can breathe freely again.

She doesn’t know how much longer she can go on like this. This isn’t how their lives were supposed to go.

* * *

_Four_

The first thing Miranda thinks of that morning when she wakes is that the rain has finally stopped and later she should be able to work in the garden. Contentment slips over her as she lies there, still drowsy with sleep. She loves the still small but slowly growing garden that she’s made since coming here to Nassau.

The second thing she thinks is that it’s been one year since Thomas’s death. It hits her slow like she’s drowning in slow motion, like she’s sinking deep into the ocean, grief filling her nostrils and pulling her down into the depths.

She can’t breathe. James, Flint, whatever the fuck his name is now – she knows the anger in her is both aimed and not aimed at him in this moment- still sleeps and she can’t just lie there beside him right now. If she could trade him for the husband she’s lost, she would do so in a heartbeat.

The dew is still on the grass when she steps out onto the porch. It’s barely dawn. The morning glistens before her, fresh with the newness that every day brings. It’s exquisitely beautiful; it breaks her heart further.

Miranda slides down to sit on the steps, clutching at her arms helplessly. She doesn’t even know the exact date of Thomas’s death. This is simply the day, that wretched awful day, where she learned of it.

In a way there are several anniversaries of this grief. The day she and James had to leave London, leaving Thomas behind. The day of learning of his death. And the day that James had accepted it. For days, weeks, afterwards he had refused to believe the letter was true.

“They want us to forget him.” He told her. “Thomas wouldn’t….he wouldn’t leave us.”

Miranda hadn’t wanted to believe it either, but the weight of carrying that hope as James was doing, of living for that meager chance, was too much. If she did that, she would shatter. Scream wordlessly into the world and let the sound never end, echoing out into the sea for all eternity. The only way to survive was to accept it. Instinctively, she knew this.

So she had simply folded the letter up and put it away in the drawer, closing it softly before fetching her hat and going for a walk, away from the cottage and James and the past.

When she had returned hours later, he’d been waiting, enfolding her in his arms silently and she let him. But he was still clinging to the hope and she had walked beyond it. There was no meeting on the path for them.

And yet, eventually, James had accepted it as well. She could see it in the curve of his jaw as he dressed, fastening his swordbelt. In the way he drank more on the evenings when he came back to her, sitting for hours. In how he would look at her, guilt in his desire, even as they moved together, before release came and rescued them both.

Miranda remembers all of this as she sits there, weeping softly into her arms. How has she survived an entire year? The ache threatens to swallow her whole, and the temptation to let it is strong.

But she draws a breath, slowly releasing her arms from the position she had folded herself. The sun shines softly though the leaves. The dew patterns break as she places her feet in the grass, walking out into the morning. The breeze around her carries the scent of the sea. The earth will be rich and damp when she works in it later. The garden is waiting.

Miranda looks up at the sky and knows today is just one day. That there will be times when she doesn’t feel this possibility in the start of another day. But it’s the first time she thinks, perhaps there is still hope beyond the past in London.

She turns to go back into the cottage and stops.

James stands on the porch, watching her. He is still James on this morning, bare-chested, barely dressed (how that would have scandalized the neighbors in London) watching her out of those careful arresting eyes that she loves so dearly, that Thomas loved as well. His hair is longer now and the beard and mustache he’s kept to maintain the role of Flint suit him. She thinks, not for the first time, that the life on this island suits him.

“Miranda?”

She licks her lips and doesn’t speak as she walks across the grass. His hand touches her shoulder almost tentatively as she reaches the porch. She leans into it, closing her eyes. She doesn’t have the strength to speak of what day it is.

“I know.” He murmurs, kissing her hair.

She looks up at him, unable to keep the tears from filling her eyes again as he cups her face. The kiss is a sigh shared between them, their lips wordlessly sharing their grief. And yet, Miranda can feel the warmth of the sun on her skin as they stand there silently, and it is still a new day.


End file.
